


Wolves, Lambs, and Other Bedtime Creatures

by bostonfireflies



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, gays guns and gore, pre-game, the three Gs that became the driving force of the golden age of exploration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-23 23:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bostonfireflies/pseuds/bostonfireflies
Summary: Dina's new. Ellie tries avoiding her. The keyword is “tries.”





	Wolves, Lambs, and Other Bedtime Creatures

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”_

_\- C.G. Jung_

**Wyoming**

 

 

 

 

 

Riley was in her dreams again.

It’s the fourth time this month since she’s returned to Jackson. Ellie’s noticed she’s been waking up the same way too, always bright and wide-eyed and clinging on to this childish hope. In her dreams, Riley would be standing some ways off, and Ellie would run towards her each time, wishfully, perhaps, succumbing to any slight possibility — but when she reaches out to latch onto hands that are not there, that haven’t been there for so long, the choking realization suddenly hurls itself within her. The dream is nothing more. It is an illusion that inflames the anguish plagued across her chest, a bitterness Ellie's never really learned to keep down.

Riley's pendant is in a drawer compartment to her left, buried beneath some several belongings. Ellie had once wished she had just left it there at that fucking mall.

 

 

 

 

Dina is the new girl from three weeks ago. She and another handful of individuals who had previously been in some faraway settlement from some faraway place. They had shuffled heavily towards Jackson's gates in a disoriented, exhausted, hopeless fashion. They did not mean to intrude, but they weren't planning on leaving, either. Maria had demanded an explanation, and the older among them told of the usual: savage men ransacking their homes, taking their belongings, killing their people, and oh, isn’t there any place to spend the night, we’ve been out here for so long, there isn’t much food left.

Of course it was Tommy who had let them in. Joel hadn’t approved, as he has always done, but Tommy had told him, in equally-stubborn conviction, that there was no point to preserving the damn town if they didn’t have anyone to share it with. Ellie’s sure there’s some philosophy hidden in the platitude somewhere, because those droves of refugees turned out to fit in just fine in Jackson. Each had managed to figure out their own kind of niche, their own productive role to contribute.

Dina’s happened to be in the patrols.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Who taught you how to use a bow?”

Ellie looks up at the figure standing on the southern gate’s parapet. When Dina speaks, her words are vibrant and firm, like she has always been this way, so confident and so loose.

(Like she hadn’t lost her home less than two months ago and all the people who had gone down with it).

“No one, really,” Ellie replies. 

“Oh, okay,” Dina says, her black curls are falling out at the side, even with her cap on. “So, you were just born with stellar archery skills.” 

Ellie smiles a little as she walks towards the gate’s entrance, her bow slung over one shoulder, a hand holding onto a daily haul of rabbits, counting five this time. Dina hurries down the metallic stairwell to lay her rifle on the side of the wall, then watches as Ellie unloads her game onto an old nursing cart meant for Kris at the kitchens. 

“I played around a lot during target practice back at school — the ones ran by military,” Ellie says, albeit reluctantly. “Never used real arrows, though. They didn’t let us. I think they knew how that would have turned out.” 

There is a look forming on Dina's face, a smirk of intrigue. She pushes both hands further into the pockets of her jacket. “That so? Didn't think you the humble type. No idea you used to be in the QZs.” 

“Yeah . . . It’s pretty much where I grew up.” 

“Huh. Kind of assumed you were always just . . . here, you know?”

Ellie glances at the ground, wheels the cart around idly. “Been around, actually,” she mutters out.

“Different places?”

“You can say that.” 

“Well, look at you. Must have been fun.”

The past year flashes through her mind in a blink of an eye. Ellie winces, although not visibly, and looks to the ground. She feels a shred of annoyance. Is it towards Dina? She isn’t sure. 

“Wouldn't really call it fun," Ellie says bluntly, and she wheels the cart a bit more further, lengthening the distance between them.

Dina doesn’t reply. In their lapse, she instead looks Ellie over for a moment, gauging her response with deep-set eyes before glancing away elsewhere herself. Ellie's probably got her off her groove. She notices how flushed Dina's skin appears, although she isn’t sure if that’s been a normal thing — they’ve never talked face to face before, she doesn’t understand why she'd talk her up now.

“I used to be from Washington,” Dina says. She turns her head to the nearby building and sees the graffiti on its walls. “Stayed in a QZ as well, before it all went to shit. Now I’ve just been moving around, too.”

That’s how they are for a couple of fleeting seconds. Ellie can feel the weakness in between her words, a tone she already knows is uncommon for her demeanor. There is a part of her that yearns to ask more, though Dina's story was everyone else’s story, too — lose some people, leave everything and everyone you knew, start over, big fucking whoop. Ellie quietly grips the handles of the cart. She would prefer not to have smalltalk, because what the hell is the point, and wishes Dina'd just hurry up so she could give the damn rabbits to Kris already.

But Ellie doesn’t go. She stays at the gate for a few more moments.

“Well,” she says, and Dina’s brown eyes glaze over her once more. “Maybe this time’ll be different.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the week of her sixteenth spring comes around, Joel offers to take Ellie on a hike.

“I think I’m good,” she says. It was a charming offer, but the idea of hiking some mountain felt underwhelming when they had practically trekked across the entire goddamn country.

Then again . . . she hasn’t really been anywhere for a good while, hasn’t had anyone to talk to, save for the occasional updates during patrols about whether or not Oliver Clark really got off on dead infected. Most days seem to just blur into the next season, and if Ellie wasn’t doing work, she was at home. 

So when she looks out her window that same day—eyeing a group of teenagers as they head to the commons, a laughing Dina included—does Ellie realize that, maybe, this hike is what she needs.

She finds Joel downstairs reading some book about livestock, hunched over on a chair behind the kitchen bar in a fully-engrossed state. Ellie always thought it the strangest thing, Joel reading. He’s killed and maimed and tortured and _worse_ — but sure, a book or two wouldn't be so bad.

“Let’s go at first light,” she tells him, doesn’t really care if he’s heard her or not. But Joel looks up and his eyes un-wrinkle themselves at the sight of her. He looks pleasantly surprised.

"Uh. Alright."

 

  

 

 

 

 

There wasn't much conversation on the way up the trail, it was more of a mix of dragged breaths and heavy _are-you-goods_ that'd littered the thinning air. Just some dozen feet below the apex of the mountain, Joel helps Ellie up on the last stretch. His arms are as steady and firm as they have been almost a year ago.

(Almost a year ago is a memory Ellie doesn’t like to reminisce, so she buries it deep, the deepest it can go).

“This should be it,” Joel heaves out, his hand wiping sweat at the brow. There are no more footholds for them to ascend any higher. The wind up here is relentless and plays with the fringes of Joel's peppered hair. He takes a canteen of water out and offers it to Ellie ("Thanks.") before giving it a swig himself.

The pointed apex above is only a few yards across, some several feet long. It’s rough and uneven and there are flora creeping out at the cracks, though Ellie finds that the view it offers is beautiful. The forest landscape before them is a lush green this spring, complementing the bluing sky. At the farther corners of Wyoming stand proud mountains recently cleared of the morning fog. It's difficult not to be impressed.

Ellie finds a nice spot to sit down, hugs her knees to her chest as Joel stands across with his arms folded. The strong winds chafe their cheeks, trying stubbornly to knock them down, though it barely fazes them both. Ellie busies herself to find Jackson hidden amongst the treetops. She eventually spots its watchtowers from some miles away, the smoke columns billowing out from certain edges of the town. They’ve probably just begun with today’s routines. 

“So. How’d you know this was here?” Ellie asks, still looking at the world. Joel shrugs in the corner of her eye.

“I didn’t.” 

That earns a chuckle out of her. “Didn’t take you for a gambler.” 

“I’d say it ain’t too bad,” Joel says, Ellie can hear him smiling. “Helluva view.”

“Oh, yeah. This is great.” 

Then there is quiet.

They have done something similar a year ago, just after the foothills of Utah, in search of a hospital she hadn’t seen the insides of. Now they are atop this mountain peak, overlooking a community they have grown to call home . . . though to Ellie this home still feels so distant and foreign, like a place she doesn’t quite understand yet. How many months has it been since she'd gotten here? When before she had dreamed of settling in a quiet town exactly like Jackson—far from the military and infected and certain groups—now Ellie catches herself longing for something more, something missing.

(Perhaps a purpose?) 

There are times when Ellie's wondered if Joel is as content as he looks to be. As she sits with him here, beyond the valley of Jackson, Ellie steals a sidelong glance at Joel and finds his eyes closed, breathing deeply, his crow’s feet even more noticeable in the day. He's smiling, albeit faintly. Ellie's found him in this state more frequently than she's ever thought. It was like something heavy and cumbersome came off his shoulders the moment they had arrived in town, not that it was anything alarming, really. Ellie is envious of him, of a lot of things. She wonders when her own weight will come off, hopes it doesn't take years.

Joel sighs quietly, in satisfaction maybe, and so Ellie turns back to a view that demands to be admired, leaving the two of them to share the scene in somber silence.

When they finally return before noontime, Joel heads over to their backyard shack, says there’s something he needs to get. Ellie shrugs out an okay. She’s already turned on her heel towards home when Joel suddenly beckons her back.

When Ellie looks, she almost screams.

He’s bringing over a fucking guitar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tied around Dina's wrist is a bracelet, it’s leathery and intricate and of a craft Ellie hasn’t seen elsewhere, but she doesn’t ask about it. She hasn't bothered to ask Dina about a lot of things. 

Except maybe this: 

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you?”

Above her, Dina lets out a cheerful, resounding laugh — straight from her stupid heart.

“What? You said it was hot.” 

“I didn’t ask you to push me into a fucking _sludge pond_.”

At this does Dina feign offense; she bats her long eyelashes down towards her victim. “Oh, Ellie, haven’t you heard? Mud’s a good exfoliator.”

Ellie merely rolls her eyes, wants to be angry but can’t. Lonny’s had the brilliant idea to have them double up on today’s patrol.  It wasn’t something Ellie was completely on board for—she and Dina have only spoken probably three times—yet here she is, two and a half hours later, dawdling around in the unpleasant contents of a sloped, three-feet-wide mud puddle which _Dina_ had the luxury of giving her. Ellie goes ahead and grumbles out a couple more _dammits_ , struggling as she gets one leg out of the muck. It’s as pathetic a display of effort as any. Dina must have felt bad, because now she’s making the naive decision to set aside their weapons, crouch down, and extend an arm.

“Here.”

"Thanks," then Ellie grins, almost wickedly, and _yanks_.

It's too late for Dina to fight back.

There’s plenty of yelling by the time Ellie’s pulled her in. And mud. Dina, hilariously infuriated, pushes Ellie down to the ground, and the two begin to wrestle childishly, a mess of dirtied limbs springing up and under in all directions. Ellie calls Dina something foul, Dina returns the exchange, and the cycle of name-calling continues on for a while until they have exhausted both words and breath. The aftermath has left mud to be nestled in every small crevice between their skin and clothes. Dina whips her head up to take a dip of air before going back to her incessant, uncontrolled giggling. 

“I might actually kill you right now,” she says, flapping the gunk out of her slender fingers. 

“Now you’ve got mud on you, mud monster.” 

“Wow. That’s personal. Alright, swamp bitch,” then Dina brings up two fistfuls of sludge, and proceeds to rub it all on Ellie’s cheeks in small circular motions. “See? Exfoliate.” 

They get a lot of baffled looks from their fellow patrolmen on their walk back to the gate, to which Dina and Ellie smile sheepishly in reply. They’ll probably get an earful from Lonny too once he sees them saunter in like the mud-encrusted pair they are, but Ellie doesn’t mind. There's a light feeling in her chest, fluttering now and settling at the redness of her cheeks. She hasn't felt it in a while.

 

 

 

 

 

“Okay. So . . . this is E—“

“A.”

“—A minor.”

“Yep.”

“Shit. I keep messing it up.”

Joel does a small shift on the other end of the couch. “Give it time.”

A breath of frustration escapes Ellie’s lips, not nearly enough to blow the arising steam stewing from her heating mind. She _has_ been giving this time, and it’s just too damn complicated. Joel’s scribbled some dozen chord diagrams on a yellowpad in an effort to help her out. It’s effective, sure, though she doesn't know where to put her damn fingers.

“Joel,” Ellie says, frowning down at the paper settled between them. “What is that?"

One of the diagrams has a thick horizontal line striking through the top of the strings.

“S’bar chord,” he tells her plainly, like he’s already said these same exact words. “If you see that on a fret, you gotta use a finger or two to press ‘em all down.”

“Um. Okay.” Ellie does an attempt, winces at the sharpness of her strum. “I don’t think that was it.”

“Your fingers in the right place?”

“Yes." 

“Then press harder.” 

“ _I am_. It hurts like hell.” 

She gives it two more tries before giving up in a fit of exasperated profanities, then sets aside the instrument with a yearning to throw it across the room. Joel only scoffs, a scene he’s probably dealt with before, perhaps lifetimes ago, and he patiently brings the guitar over to himself before settling it comfortably in his grasp. He hums a little as he tunes the guitar, then he picks a few strings. The wooden hollow cantillates at his touch and Ellie can practically see the vibrations of each string as his fingers gently strike against them. Joel begins to strum a piece soft and pleasing to the ear. For a moment Ellie thinks he’ll sing. 

“Seen you hanging with a coupla kids today,” he says instead; his eyes don’t leave the guitar.

Dina comes to mind at that remark — her and some others. Ellie habitually brushes the strands of hair away from her face, her fingertips coming back still stingy and smelling of copper.  “Oh. Yeah, they’re cool.” 

“Friends of yours?”

“I guess.” She doesn’t really know what to call them, but Dina had dragged Ellie over to her group the other day, much to her protests, and had gone ahead and introduced Ellie herself. She’s remembered some names, though it is the faces she better recognizes: blond-haired Todd, a lean boy of seventeen, redheaded Jean who’s (allegedly) the fastest girl Jackson has to offer, and restless Mili, brown-skinned and brown-eyed, who perpetually rubs the inside of his arm each time before speaking. 

"Be nice if you'd invite 'em over." Joel suggests, and Ellie laughs at that, looks at the crinkles on the sides of Joel's eyes when he gives off a peculiarly warm smile.

"What, and watch paint dry? Sure. They'll be dying to see that."

He turns to her with a raised eyebrow. "DVD player works, don't it? I can throw in some venison on the grill, maybe even bring out the six-string . . . " He trails off when his strumming hits a particular high, and it’s about the longest five seconds of spirited southern picking she’s ever heard. Ellie sees how effortlessly Joel switches his fingers from one fret to the other, concludes it’s the craziest thing she’s seen all day.

“You should sing for us,” Ellie blurts out, joking, though a part of her does not deign to admit a truth. Joel softly chews the insides of his cheeks and leans forward, smirking, and Ellie already knows his answer.

She _has_ heard him sing, on certain days when the sun has barely risen, when he’s outside on the porch, sitting at the front steps. It is low and vague and he mostly just hums out the lyrics, but he sings. Ellie hasn’t figured out why he does it. She doesn’t recognize the songs, though his voice brings them the familiarity that makes her forget that uncertainty she has for him, if only for a little while. Some days she will wake up from her dreams, and in her moment of panic does she realize the soft voice outside her window, Joel’s voice, and that anxiety quickly abates at the slightest hint of a melody. She will press her ear to the window, where he'll be sitting just below, and listens for what seems like years. 

 

 

 

 

 

“There she is,” says a voice from behind. Ellie’s rudely pulled out of her reverie when Dina flicks a finger on her nose and moseys over to sit across.

“Ow.”

“Yeah, yeah, cry me a river.” Dina's let her hair down today, something she seldom does, because she’s always complained of the way it gets whenever she does anything more than take two steps. Dina presses her hands down on the table as if she's about to drop the biggest news Ellie’s heard all week. "So. Speaking of rivers . . .  I’ve seen you today.”

Ellie stuffs a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth. “Congratulations, you have eyes.”

“You know what I mean, smart-ass. But that's not the point. The point _is,_ I  _saw_ you by the river today. You didn’t tell me you had a guitar.”

“You _spied on me_?” The thought makes her blush, but she can't stop herself from blurting out a laugh, another noise amidst the loud buzz of a cafeteria in breakfast hours. Ellie tries to hide the growing on her cheeks (and fails).

“Oh, ha-ha.” Dina says instead, unamused. “You forget I have early morning patrols. Trust me, I’m not that obsessed with you.”

“Dude, if you keep talking to me, people are going to think we’re friends.”

Dina grabs something from the table and throws it at her: an aging apple core.

“Rude.” Ellie can’t stop herself from grinning. “Alright, whatever. So you saw me — what's the big deal?”

“I want you to play at the bonfire.”

“What?” All traces of a smile are quickly erased. 

“Tomorrow. Me and the others are having one behind the old barn. You should go. It’d be fun.”

Ellie has very different definitions of fun.

“Dina, I’m not exactly a professional.”

She shrugs. “Who said you needed to be? You know we can’t bring beer, and that’s one thing I’ll never be able to forgive . . . But a guitar? It’ll be perfect. What else could be more fitting? I'm serious, think about it. I mean, if you'd want, you could even sing if—” 

“Oh, _sing?_ ” Ellie's stomach begins to turns itself over, the usual response when she so much as begins to picture herself doing anything even remotely uncomfortable. “Yeah, look, I'm not—"

“Okay, so you play the guitar. That means you can sing.”

“Fallacy,” Ellie says. “And I can't sing.”

“Lie," Dina retorts. _Am I in English class?_ "Come on, El. I heard you too. You’re _good_.”

That just makes her blush even more, dammit.

“You’re just trying to make me go.” 

“Jesus, you’re coy as fuck right now. No, dickwad. I'm not. I genuinely think you've got something going on here.”

Ellie fidgets in her seat. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass," she says, returning to her eggs, but when Ellie looks up after a bite she finds Dina sending daggers with her eyes.

“Okay, Dina, _listen_ ," Ellie says. "You’re asking every Clicker within five miles to come clawing through the gates.”

“Oh, please. There've been louder things than a fucking acoustic  _singalong_. Also, we have walls." She's practically begging her now. “Ellie. _Please?_ ”

Something in her does want her to go, something small and tugging from the inside like a forbidden, buried emotion. Ellie is hesitant anyway, the strange ache notwithstanding. 

“I’m sorry, Dina. I don’t know.” She doesn't mean for it to sound so resolute, but it comes out that way still. 

Dina doesn’t look disappointed at the response, just bummed. She bites the inside of her cheek, then looks down at her lap before up at Ellie and sighs. “Ugh. Fine, loser.” she says, though there is no bitterness in her tone. “You know I can’t force you.”

She gives Dina an apologetic smile. “Rain check.”

“Still, I’ll be leaving a spot for you . . . because I’m going to kidnap you anyway and demand a performance for ransom.” Ellie chuckles at that, scrunches her nose in faux annoyance when Dina stands and walks over to flick it again. “I mean — in case you ever change your mind,” she says in a tone Ellie can't quite figure out.

And then she’s gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later that day Ellie is lying on the brown settee in their living room, head cushioned by one of its arms. She relishes the pleasant visit of a midday breeze under all this warm near-summer heat, the window to her left slightly ajar. 

Joel is in the kitchen not too far from her. Busy setting up a new countertop, another one of his woodworking projects for the past year (the most recent being the handsome crib he had made out of dark walnut for a couple across the street). Although a compelling dilemma has unfortunately stopped him from continuing any further progress: he is undecided on which wood to work with.

“Cherry,” Ellie says from the couch, totally dependable during these predicaments. “Always cherry.”

“Maybe . . . nah. Don’t think it goes well with what we got here.” He’s looking at two bundles sprawled out before him, eyeing the freshly chopped hickory with a face pensive and frowning. "Hickory, though . . .” He goes back to ruminating instead. Forever in constant conflict. It’s always so adorable how goddamn into it he is with these things.

Ellie’s only view is the ceiling — a blank canvas, perfect for replaying all of today's earlier events. She hasn’t had anything to think about aside from Dina and her stupid bonfire. She can’t forget the excitement on Dina's face when she'd asked, how quickly Ellie had refused, and it forces her to feel awful.

Why the hell does she even _feel_ bad?

Ellie couldn't go if she wanted to. She’s barely done any actual improvement since she’d started learning to play nearly two months ago. It would be impossible to have a song by tomorrow night. 

Right?

Ellie closes her eyes for five whole minutes then opens them again at the ceiling, finds nothing scrawled out for her in big bold letters. It is only the buried feeling inside her, tugging and tugging and tugging.

_Dammit, Dina._

“Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“There's this song I want to learn on the guitar.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> i found myself nestled in the loving embrace of the trailer before it abruptly threw me across the room. i hope you enjoyed getting destroyed as much as i did with last week's reveal. hopefully we see more of these gays being happy or else you can catch me on tumblr getting shafted in the ass ❤


End file.
